


morning glories

by PeppyBismilk



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Body Paint, Intimacy, M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romance, Scars, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24136423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeppyBismilk/pseuds/PeppyBismilk
Summary: Sylvain sees colors when he closes his eyes, or so he tells Felix when it’s just the two of them. The world beneath Felix’s eyelids is black—maybe red, after a battle. Sometimes he wonders: does Sylvain see colors the same way he does?(written for a kinkmeme light prompt for sylvix + body painting)
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36
Collections: FE3H Kinkmeme Light





	morning glories

**Author's Note:**

> written for a fe3h kinkmeme light [prompt for sylvain painting on felix’s back](https://fe3h-kinkmeme-light.dreamwidth.org/452.html?replyto=26820)

“I want to paint you,” makes for a strange finish to a sparring session, but it’s what Sylvain says, offhand, as he’s putting their weapons away.

Felix doesn’t even respond until they’re out of the training hall, on the way back to their dormitories. “Why?” 

“I thought it would be a nice way to unwind.”

Sitting still for hours doesn’t sound like Felix’s idea of relaxation, and he never had much use for art—at least not the kind Sylvain like. Green landscapes, fruit bowls, and fancy rooms bore him.

“But you never paint people.”

“Huh?” Sylvain’s lips turn down in confusion, but only for a moment. “Oh! You think I want to paint a picture of you.” 

“What else could _I want to paint you_ mean?”

Sylvain smiles, wide and knowing. “While I would love nothing more than a giant painting of you, naked and sprawled out on my bed”—Felix cringes at the very suggestion—“I meant paint  _ on _ you. Make your skin my canvas.”

Felix’s first instinct is to laugh. He’s neither pretty enough to paint nor paint on; years of reckless battles and haphazardly healed wounds have marred his skin, not to mention all the calluses and burns that litter his “canvas.” He’s never put much stock in aesthetics, but he knows how he looks. 

Sylvain knows beautiful. He’s been intimate with just the sort of untouched maidens artists love to portray: smooth, soft, and flawless skin in all shades, bathed in silk and light. Meaningless to Felix. Function, not form, measures worth, and beauty fades long before skill.

Still, jealousy curdles, sour in Felix’s stomach. He and Sylvain are together, and Felix doesn’t doubt that it’s forever, but Sylvain is the same man he always was. He’s given up an endless buffet of breasts and ass (because Felix has neither), soft thighs and bright smiles. It’s a wonder Sylvain’s eyes don’t wander, and yet they linger on Felix, almost unnervingly so. Felix can’t imagine why. 

Felix’s eyes have always been drawn to Sylvain, ever since they were children. No better way to keep him out of trouble than to watch him like a hawk. When they first arrived at Garreg Mach, he found new reasons to stare: Sylvain’s broad shoulders, his narrow waist, his taut thighs. Felix kept the same stern eye on Sylvain, but he got very good at disguising longing gazes as glares. 

It’s hardly fair; Sylvain is more beautiful, more affectionate, and more open. All Felix brings to the relationship are swords. 

“Surely you can find a better canvas,” Felix tells him in his room. 

Sylvain’s smile vanishes, and he’s in front of Felix in an instant. “Impossible. Have you seen yourself?”

And before Felix can protest, Sylvain’s coaxing off his shirt and stroking his back, tracing the spaces between ribs and thumbing his spine because he knows it makes Felix shiver.

Felix tries to bristle. “Knowing you, you’ll just paint a dick on my back and call it a day.”

“Felix…” Sylvain says it low, humorless. “If you want a dick on your back, we don’t need paint.”

And that makes Felix shiver, too, but he stays silent.

Sylvain draws even closer, presses their chests together so that he can look over Felix’s shoulder. “This one.” Sylvain traces a scar that runs from shoulder blade to spine. “This one was meant for me.”

“Was it?” Felix wonders aloud. Sylvain’s taken countless blows on his behalf, the fool, but Felix can’t tell them from his other scars. “I don’t remember.” 

“I do.” Sylvain’s fingers dive lower, to a mark on Felix’s ribs. “This one was for His Highness.” He touches a gauge on Felix’s flank, for the Professor. A scrape on the small of his back, for Annette. For Ashe, a nick on the crest of his hip, in the same place Sylvain’s thumb gravitates when he and Felix share a bed. 

Sylvain’s lips brush his forehead, his hair. “Please,” he says, “let me show you my love for the way you show yours.”

And Felix tilts Sylvain’s face down to his. Agrees with a tiny nod and a soft kiss. Not for himself, but to make Sylvain happy. 

Paint chills his skin and the bristles tickle, peppering Felix with gooseflesh as Sylvain swirls colors over his back. The colors Sylvain chose remains a mystery—Felix keeps his eyes closed. He can’t see his own back, but looking at anything other than the insides of his eyelids is too intimate.

Sylvain sees colors when he closes his eyes, or so he’s told Felix when it’s just the two of them. The world beneath Felix’s eyelids is black—maybe red, after a battle. Sometimes he wonders: does Sylvain see colors the same way he does? Or for him, is the world richer, more vivid? Gaudier? That would explain a lot.

When the brush dips into scar tissue, Felix barely senses it. His back seems like slivers of skin between scars, though Felix can’t be sure. He doesn’t own one mirror, let alone the two it would take to check. All he knows is when Sylvain’s fingers run down his back, it’s out of love, not lust. Pits and lines catch his fingertips like tiny traps unless he sticks to the center, but Sylvain touches all of him just the same.

Some of the paint starts to dry while Sylvain works. It pulls when Felix breathes, but discipline keeps him rooted in place as Sylvain draws dots and lines Felix can’t follow. 

Sylvain keeps a surprising distance. Felix expected hot breath in his ear and a stiff cock at his back, since a Sylvain can’t even spar without making a lewd remark. But painting, it seems, is one of the few things Sylvain takes seriously, even on an ephemeral canvas (because Felix already itches to wash his back). Except for an occasional, “You all right, Fe?” or a, “You’re doing great,” he’s too focused to acknowledge Felix. But his thoughtful hums and surprised  _ ohs _ roll through Felix, evoking shivers he hopes Sylvain is too consumed to notice.

Just when Felix can’t stand still a moment longer, Sylvain steps back.

“Done,” he says, proud.

Felix looks over his shoulder at Sylvain, not the colors encroaching on his peripheral vision. “You owe me. A week of practice, twice a day.”

“Anything,” Sylvain swears. Paint smears litter his face, arms, and chest—how he got through so many hours without pressing his naked torso to Felix’s is both a mystery and a miracle. The colors suit him: bold dots and streaks that somehow look deliberate. “You just have to do one more thing for me.”

Felix crosses his arms, careful not to crack the paint. “What’s that?”

“Look at yourself.” It’s more request than obligation. “Please.”

It’s possible in here, after all; Sylvain has two mirrors. “To check the back of my hair,” he explained to Felix once. “And to check for love bites.”

Felix likes to leave too many to hide.

“Fine.” But Felix clicks his tongue for good measure. He never knows what to say when he looks at Sylvain’s paintings, and he takes a deep breath as Sylvain adjusts the mirrors. It’ll be even harder to comment because the art is on him. 

In the end, he’s speechless.

Hands on his shoulders, Sylvain turns him toward one mirror so he can see his back in the other. 

Felix is a garden, tangled with flowering vines and ripe fruit. Blossoms in colors he’s never seen in nature adorn his back (if that is his back under there), seamless gradients of blues from the ocean, the sky, and Sylvain’s imagination. Berries glow purple red, nothing like the blood red that plagues his dreams, tempting him even though he can’t stand the cloying sweetness. Everywhere else is green, braided cords that twist and interlock with hyperreal depth.

Is this how Sylvain sees the world? Is this how Sylvain sees  _ him? _

He still hesitates to call it beautiful. Perhaps bright. Vibrant. Lush. Not words Felix associates with himself.

“Do you see it now?” Sylvain asks. “You’re alive.”

Felix almost snorts. Of course he’s alive. But he looks again, watches the vines move as he breathes.  Alive.

The paint covers his scars, but they’re still there, transformed into fruit and flowers. Each one is a close call, a near miss, a long stay in the infirmary, and Felix may not be beautiful, but he’s alive. 

Morning glories. Felix recognizes them lining the long scar on his shoulder blade, the blow he took for Sylvain. Morning glories aren’t this blue in real life—they can’t be—but this scar proves Sylvain and Felix live on, and even Felix can see the beauty in that. 

They’ll die, of course, like flowers. If this war doesn’t trample them, disease will. But for Sylvain, to be alive is to be with Felix: fighting with him, loving him, painting him.

No more words are spoken. 

Sylvain embraces him. Felix watches in the mirror as those scarred, freckled, paint-speckled arms coil around his back, over the lush flora, before closing his eyes and losing himself in Sylvain’s kiss.

No colors appear in his mind’s eye, but it’s beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> let’s not talk about how those paints are probably toxic af
> 
> hope it’s okay that this didn’t get smutty! but i’m pretty proud of squeezing the dick joke in while keeping it serious


End file.
